Geology and the Young Earth

he hand-written note pinned to some photocopied
pages was typical. ‘I wonder if you could help
with a geological problem ...?’ The writer, a Bible-believing
Christian, was confused. He had just encountered some tired old
geological arguments attacking the straightforward biblical account of
earth history — i.e., denying a recent creation and a global
Flood on the basis of ‘geological evidences’.

A number of books in the last 25 years have stirred
up these so-called ‘geological problems’ and undermined faith in the
Bible for many people. Sadly, the ones which cause most confusion and
distress are those written by professing ‘Bible-believers’.[1],[2],[3],[4]

A curriculum writer with a Christian home school
association wrote to us that he was ‘pretty well wiped out’ after
reading these books.[5] He
wondered if we ‘might have answers to what these
gentlemen say.’ We certainly have! Another person who had read
some of them said, ‘I may have been
overlooking information that cast doubts upon the recent creation
model.’

Because the ‘recent creation model’ he refers to is
simply what the Bible plainly says, he has really been caused to doubt
the Bible.

The unsuspecting readers of such books, thinking they
are getting something from ‘Bible-believing Christians’, expect
encouragement and faith-building material. They are generally
unprepared for the explosive mixture of heretical theology, poor science
and vehement attacks on Bible-believers.

For example, the author Alan Hayward claims to be a
‘Bible-believing Christian’. However, he is a unitarian, which means he
denies the tri-unity of God. The deity of Christ is clearly taught in
the New Testament (e.g. John 1:114, 5:18; Titus 2:13; for more
information, see Is Jesus
Christ God?, How can one
God be three persons? and the very detailed study of biblical evidence
for the Trinity) — yet Hayward denies this.[6] Clearly, ‘Bible-believing’
Hayward chooses to reinterpret those parts of the New Testament with
which he disagrees.

He works the same way with the Old Testament.
Instead of accepting the clear teaching of Genesis, he reinterprets the
passages to fit his billion-year preference for the age of the earth.[7]

In so doing, of course, he introduces confusion and
problems that destabilise readers. We are warned to beware of teachers
who vandalise the clear teaching of Scripture to fit with their
philosophy (Colossians 2:8).

Superficially, Hayward amasses an impressive battery
of arguments as to why the Bible can’t mean what it says. Perhaps the
single most important lesson from his book is his strategy itself. Each
of his attacks on the Word of God elevates some other ‘authority’,
whether derived from geology, astronomy, secular history or theology,
above the Bible. This approach is as old as the Garden of Eden.

True knowledge begins with the Bible (Proverbs 1:7,
Psalms 119:160; 138:2), and that is where we need to start. God was
there when He created the world. He knows everything, does not tell
lies, and does not make mistakes. It is from the Bible that we learn
that the world is ‘young’.

If the Bible taught that the world was millions of
years old,[8] we would
believe that. However, the concept of millions of years of death and
suffering contradicts the Word of God, and destroys the foundation of
the Gospel of Christ.

Many people find it difficult to accept that
scientific investigation should start with the Bible. They think we can
answer the question about the age of the earth by coming to the evidence
with an ‘open mind’. In fact, no one has an open mind. Evidence does
not interpret itself; rather, everyone views the world through a belief
framework. Unfortunately, as humans we never have all the information.
So, when we start from the evidence, we can never be sure our
conclusions are rightlike in a classic ‘whodunnit’, just one piece of
information can change the whole picture. By contrast, when we start
from the Word of God, we can be sure that what it says is true.

Even if we can’t answer some of the apparent problems
now, we can be confident that there is an answer. We may not
find out about the answer on this side of eternity, but that would
simply be because we did not have all the information necessary to come
to the right conclusion. On the other hand, ongoing research may
reveal the answer — and it often has, as we will see.

On first appearance, the evidence that Hayward
assembles seems so overwhelming. But the problems he describes are
easily answeredindeed many answers were known before he wrote his
book. Either he was unaware of the answers, or he deliberately ignored
them. Let’s look at some of the ‘science’ he presents so
persuasively.

Varves

A common argument against the Bible involves varvesrock formations with alternating layers of fine dark, and coarse light
sediment. Annual changes are assumed to deposit bands with light layers
in summer and dark layers in winter. It is reported that some rock
formations contain hundreds of thousands of varves, thereby ‘proving’
the earth is much older than the Bible says.[9] But the assumption that each couplet always
takes a year to form is wrong. Recent catastrophes show that violent
events like the Flood described in Genesis can deposit banded rock
formations very quickly. The Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington
State produced eight metres (25 feet) of finely layered sediment in a
single afternoon![10] And
a rapidly pumped sand slurry was observed to deposit about a metre (34
feet) of fine layers on a beach over an area the size of a football
field (cross-section shown on the right: normal silica sand grains are
separated by darker layers of denser mineral grains like rutile).[11]

When sedimentation was studied in
the laboratory, it was discovered that fine bands form automatically as
the moving water transports the different sized particles sideways into
position (right).[12]
Surprisingly, the thickness of each band was found to depend on the
relative particle sizes rather than on the flow conditions.[13] A layered rock
(diatomite) was separated into its particles, and when redeposited in
flowing fluid, identical layers formed.[14]

Much is often made of the Green River varves,9 in Wyoming, USA. But these bands cannot
possibly be annual deposits because well-preserved fish and birds are
found all through the sediments.

It is unthinkable that these dead animals could have
rested on the bottom of the lake for decades, being slowly covered by
sediment. Their presence indicates catastrophic burial. It is often
claimed that the fish and birds remained in prime condition at the
bottom of the lake because the water was highly alkaline and this
preserved their carcasses.[15] Yet highly alkaline water causes organic
material to disintegrate, and that is why alkaline powder is used in
dishwashers! Another problem for the varve explanation is that the
number of bands is not consistent across the formation as it should be
if they were annual deposits.[16]

Evaporites

Similar bands in some huge deposits containing
calcium carbonate and calcium sulphate in Texas are also used to argue
the case for long ages.[17] One explanation says the deposits were
formed when the sun evaporated seawater — hence the term ‘evaporite
deposits’. Naturally, to make such large deposits in this way would
take a long time. However, the high chemical purity of the deposits
shows they were not exposed to a dry, dusty climate for thousands of
years. Rather, it is more likely that they formed rapidly from the
interaction between hot and cold seawater during undersea volcanic
activity — a hydrothermal deposit.[18]

Too Many Fossils?

Another claim of bibliosceptics is that there are
‘too many fossils’.[19] If all those animals could be resurrected,
it is said, they would cover the entire planet to a depth of at least
0.5 metres (1.5 feet). So they could not have come from a single
generation of living creatures buried by the Flood.[20]

Not surprisingly, the substance disappears when the
detail is examined. The number of fossils is calculated from an
abnormal situationthe Karroo formation in South Africa. In this
formation the fossils comprise a ‘fossil graveyard’the accumulation
of animal remains in a local ‘sedimentary basin’.[21] It is certainly improper to apply this
abnormally high population density to the whole earth. The calculation
also uses incorrect information on today’s animal population densities
and takes no account of the different conditions that likely applied
before the Flood.[22]

Too Much Coal?

Another argument used against the Bible time-line is
that the pre-Flood world could not have produced enough vegetation to
make all the coal.[23]
But again, this argument is based on wrong assumptions. The pre-Flood
land area was almost certainly greater before all the Floodwaters were
released onto the surface of the earth. Also, the climate was probably
much more productive before the Flood.[24] Furthermore, it has been discovered that
much coal was derived from forests which floated on water.[25] So, calculations based only on the area
of land would be wrong. And finally, the estimates of how much
vegetation is needed are based on the wrong idea that coal forms slowly
in swamps and that most of the vegetation rots. The Flood would have
buried the vegetation quickly, producing a hundred times more coal than
from a swamp.[22]

Fossil Forests

The petrified forests of Yellowstone National Park
have often been used to argue against Bible chronology.[26] These were once
interpreted as buried and petrified in placeas many as 50 successive
times, with a brand new forest growing upon the debris of the previous
one. Naturally, such an interpretation would require hundreds of
thousands of years to deposit the whole sequence and is inconsistent
with the Bible time-scale. But this interpretation is also inconsistent
with the fact that the tree trunks and stumps have been broken off at
their base and do not have proper root systems. Furthermore, trees from
different layers have the same ‘signature’ ring pattern, demonstrating
that they all grew at the same time.[27]

Rather than 50 successive forests, the geological
evidence is more consistent with the trees having been uprooted from
another place, and carried into position by catastrophic volcanic
mudflowssimilar to what happened during the Mount St. Helens eruption
in 1980, where waterlogged trees were also seen to float and sink with
the root end pointing downwards.[28]

Pitch

The origin of pitch is also used to ridicule the
account of Noah in the Bible.[29] Pitch is a petroleum residue, we are
told, and creationists say that petroleum was formed by the Flood. So,
where did Noah get the pitch to seal the Ark (Genesis 6:14)? This old
argument stems from ignorance of how pitch can be made. The widespread
use of petroleum is a 20th century phenomenon. How did they
seal wooden ships hundreds of years ago before petroleum was available?
In those days, pitch was made from pine tree resin.[30] A huge pitch-making industry flourished
to service the demand.

Noah’s Mud-bath?

Some attempts to discredit the Bible are wildly
absurd — like the idea that there is too much sedimentary rock in the
world to have been deposited by the one-year Flood. It is claimed that
the Ark would have floated on an ocean of ‘earthy soup’ and no fish
could have survived.[31]
This argument takes no account of how water actually carries sediment.
The claim naively assumes that all the sediment was evenly mixed in all
the water throughout the Flood year, as if thoroughly stirred in a
‘garden fishpond’. Sedimentation does not occur like this. Instead,
moving water transports sediment into a ‘basin’ and, once deposited, it
is isolated from the system.[12] The same
volume of water can pick up more sediment as it is driven across the
continents, for example, by earth movements during the Flood.

More (former) Problems, More Answers

Some similar geological problems which were once
claimed to be ‘unanswerable’ for Bible-believers but for which there are
now clear answers include:

“Coral reefs need millions of years to grow.”[32] [Actually, what was
thought to be ‘coral reef’ turns out to be thick carbonate platforms,
most probably deposited during the Flood.[33] The reef is only a very thin layer on
top. In other cases, the ‘reef’ did not grow in place from coral but was
transported there by water.[34]]

“Chalk deposits need millions of years to
accumulate.”[35]
[Chalk accumulation is not steady state but highly episodic. Under
cataclysmic Flood conditions, explosive blooms of tiny organisms like
coccolithophores could produce the chalk beds in a short space of
time.[36]]

“Granites need millions of years to cool.”[37] [Not when the cooling
effects of circulating water are allowed for.[38]]

Below: Cooling of a
granite pluton by (a) conduction and (b) convection. The sizes of the
arrows are proportional to the rate of heat flow to the surface.
Convection dissipates the heat along fractures very quickly.

“Metamorphic rocks need million of years to
form.”[39]
[Metamorphic reactions happen quickly when there is plenty of water,
just as the Flood would provide.[40]]

“Sediment kilometres thick covering metamorphic
rocks took millions of years to erode.”[41] [Only at the erosion rates observed
today. There is no problem eroding kilometres of sediment quickly with
large volumes of fast-moving water during the Flood.]

Conclusion

The section above shows some of the other arguments
along this line that were once claimed to be ‘unanswerable’. If this
article had been written some years earlier, we would not have had all
those answers. We still don’t have all the answers to some others, but
this does not mean that the answers don’t exist, just that no-one has
come up with them yet. There may be new arguments in the future
alleging to ‘prove’ that the Bible, or one of the previous answers, is
wrong. And when these are answered, there might be new ones again.
That is the nature of science. All its conclusions are tentative, and
new discoveries mean that old ideas must be changed — that is why
creationist research is important. But science ultimately can’t prove
or disprove the Bible. Faithbut not a blind faithis needed. It
is not the facts that contradict the Bible, but the
interpretations applied to them. Since we never will know
everything, we must start with the sure Word of God in order to make
sense of the world around us.

[5] John Holzmann, Sonlight
Curriculum, letter and catalogue on file.[RETURN TO TEXT]

[6] This was admitted in a letter to
creationist David C.C. Watson — see his review of Hayward’s
book in Creation Research Society Quarterly22(4):198199,
1986.[RETURN TO TEXT]

[7] Hayward, Ref. 1, pp. 167 ff.,
‘reinterprets’ the Bible to mean that God did not create in six days but
only gave the orders to create (fiats). It then took billions of years
for His orders to be executed. This idea not only contradicts the Bible
but is inconsistent with evolutionary geology as well. It achieves
nothing but added confusion.[RETURN TO TEXT]

[22] Woodmorappe,
J., The antediluvian biosphere and its capability of supplying the
entire fossil record, in The First International Conference on
Creationism, Robert Walsh (ed.), Creation Science Fellowship,
Pittsburgh, p. 205218, 1986.[RETURN TO TEXT]